About collecting and pasting multiple items

The Microsoft Office Clipboard allows you to collect text and graphic items from any number of Office documents or other programs and then paste them into any Office document. For example, you can copy some text from a Microsoft Word document, some data from Microsoft Excel, a bulleted list from Microsoft PowerPoint, some text from Microsoft FrontPage or Microsoft Internet Explorer and a datasheet from Microsoft Access, then switch back to Word and arrange any or all of the collected items in your Word document.

Office Clipboard works with the standard Copy and Paste commands. Just copy an item to the Office Clipboard to add it to your collection, then paste it from the Office Clipboard into any Office document at any time. The collected items stay on the Office Clipboard until you exit Office.

Displaying and copying items to the Office Clipboard

To copy items to the Office Clipboard, they must be displayed in the task pane of an Office program or the Collect Without Showing Office Clipboard option must be turned on. You can open the Office Clipboard in the task pane by clicking Office Clipboard on the Edit menu.

The Office Clipboard is automatically opened when you do one of the following:

Copy or cut two different items consecutively in the same program.
Copy one item, paste the item, and then copy another item in the same program.
Copy one item twice in succession.

If the Office Clipboard icon is displayed in the status area, the Office Clipboard is displayed in at least one active Office program.

If you open the Office Clipboard in the task pane of one Office program, the Office Clipboard does not automatically appear when you switch to another Office program. However, you can continue to copy items from other programs. A message is displayed above the status area to indicate an item has been added to the Office Clipboard.

Office clipboard notification

Note The display of the Office Clipboard icon and the copy status message can be turned off by turning off the Show Office Clipboard Icon on Taskbar and Show Status Near Taskbar When Copying options located on the Office Clipboard.

The Office Clipboard is not available in views where the Copy, Cut, and Paste commands are not available.

The Office Clipboard can hold up to 24 items. If you copy a 25th item, the first item in the Office Clipboard is deleted.

Collected items remain in the Office Clipboard until you quit all Office programs running on your computer or click Clear All on the Office Clipboard.

Items displayed in the Office Clipboard

As items are added to the Office Clipboard, an entry is displayed in the Office Clipboard gallery. The newest entry is always added to the top of the gallery.

Each entry includes an icon representing the source Office program and a portion of copied text or a thumbnail of a copied graphic.

Office Clipboard sample entries

Pasting items from the Office Clipboard

You can paste items from the Office Clipboard individually, or all at once. The Paste command pastes only the last item you copied. Paste All pastes all of the items stored in the Office Clipboard.

The Office Clipboard and the system Clipboard

The Office Clipboard is related to the system Clipboard in the following ways:

When you copy multiple items to the Office Clipboard, the last item you copy is always copied to the system Clipboard.
When you clear the Office Clipboard, the system Clipboard is also cleared.
When you use the Paste command, the Paste button, or the shortcut keys (CTRL+V), you paste the contents of the system Clipboard, not the Office Clipboard.